Temanummer i Acta Didactica Norden vår 2022: Kritisk literacy på fagenes premisser
Invitation to contribute in ADNOs special issue on Critical literacy from a disciplinary perspective
Critical literacy encompasses an independent and exploratory attitude towards statements about the world and the ability to understand, identify and describe the premises behind such statements (Luke, 2014; Veum & Skovholt, 2020). Important to this form of literacy is critical thinking, which is relevant in the Nordic countries today because of the world situation and the pervasive digitisation of societies; yet there are also other driving forces that have put critical reading and thinking on the agenda in the Nordic school systems lately. In Sweden, critical thinking has been given increasing attention in schools and revised curricula, and formulations on sourcing and how to examine sources’ credibility and trustworthiness have been added. In Norway, the LK20 curriculum highlights critical and scientific thinking, both in the new overall educational goals, description of basic skills and subject curricula. Following the latest revision of Denmark’s curriculum in 2017, critical thinking is included in at least three ways: students will learn to evaluate texts critically, to assess and interpret information and data in survey-based processes and learn how acquired knowledge can be used to take a critical stand on contradictory social, technological and scientific issues.
Critical literacy affects all school disciplines and cannot be reduced to the generic competencies of source evaluations. Indeed, there is a need for a disciplinary perspective on critical literacy. Here, literacy can be defined as domain-specific familiarity with the use of writing as a meaning-making resource (Bremholm, 2013, p. ix), and in language subjects, critical reading and writing are central. In other disciplines, literacy is less related to writing, but text in the broadest sense will play a role in, for example, political literacy, art literacy, the critical analysis of history or critical investigations of conflicts of interest in issues of a social, technological or scientific nature.
This special issue will shed light on such subject-specific literacy and norms for meaning-making. Literacy should be a contextualisation of both the disciplinary genres and cultures to which the disciplines can provide a critical approach. The special issue explores what a critical attitude is by examining what decision making, meaning making and practice mean in each discipline.
Editors of the special issue: Tove Stjern Frønes (University of Oslo), Jenny Wiksten Folkeryd (Uppsala University), Kjetil Børhaug (University of Bergen) and Martin Krabbe Sillasen (VIA University College, Aarhus).
February 15, 2021: Deadline for abstract submission, please email the abstract to the special issue editors (att: tove.frones@ils.uio.no). The abstract (500 words) should include information on background and research questions, theory, data source, methods, results and implications.
April 1, 2021: Abstract feedback and invitation to contribute with full manuscript. For author guidelines, please see: https://journals.uio.no/adnorden/about/submissions
September 15, 2021: Full manuscript submission (in Scandinavian language or English). Submit your manuscript in the Acta Didactica Norden online platform. Label the submission as ‘Critical literacy special issue’.
February 15, 2022: Latest notification to authors after peer review (possibility for several reviews)
March 15, 2022: Full manuscript deadline
June 2022: Special issue launch and publication
